Larry Brown: Time for Doc Rivers to move on

Mark MurphySunday, June 30, 2013

Doc Rivers has contorted himself in an attempt to put responsibility for his departure as much on Danny Ainge and Celtics ownership as his own clear desire to leave.

But he also sought out the advice of Bill Parcells, Lou Holtz and Rivers’ mentor, Larry Brown — advocates, one and all, of the idea that leaving a team is good, even beneficial. Better to make the first move than to pay for it later. Perhaps Rivers needed validation that it was OK to walk away.

Brown, who has left more jobs than arguably any other coach in the history of the sport, joked with Rivers about his own reputation. Rivers laughed and said Brown was probably the last person he should be talking to. Brown’s advice was going to be predictable.

But for a coach who once said he wanted to be the Jerry Sloan of Boston, Rivers’ staying power eroded over the last year. Brown said that in today’s coaching climate — where making the playoffs no longer guarantees job security — it’s the right of a coach to protect himself.

“You know that those things change,” the 72-year-old Brown, now head coach at Southern Methodist University, said last week. “Look at the guys who got fired — George Karl, Vinny Del Negro, Larry Drew, Lionel Hollins, Alvin Gentry.

“We went to the playoffs in Charlotte and I got fired,” Brown said of his last NBA job. “Doc’s not silly. We can talk about rebuilding, and I do understand that he was there for nine years, and I understand the relationship he had with the city and the team.

“But there is absolutely no loyalty in the NBA anymore. Look at the new GMs who are coming in — a lot of them never even played ball. And now you have analytics ruling the way things are done,” he said. “I know that Doc and Danny (Ainge) were attached at the hip, but how do you know that wouldn’t change? It just doesn’t happen that way. I wanted to be like coach (Dean) Smith and stay in one place forever, believe it or not, but that’s just not how it works.”

Self-preservation explains a lot about Brown. In addition to SMU, he has held college jobs at Kansas, where he won the 1988 national title, UCLA and, technically, Davidson, though he left the summer before what would have been his first season there (1969-70). Brown, fired by Michael Jordan from his Charlotte job midway through the 2010-11 season, has coached nine NBA teams. He won the 2004 NBA title in Detroit. He also coached the Carolina Cougars of the ABA.

“I’ve left places where I had a good reason to leave, and there were some where I wanted to stay but was let go,” he said.

For all of the bad history involving Rivers’ new team, the Clippers, Brown said he enjoyed his 11⁄2 seasons there. For starters, that’s when he got to know a very reluctant Clipper named Doc Rivers.

And like it or not, Rivers felt reluctance this summer, for different reasons. But according to Brown, Rivers was extremely divided at the time of their conversation in June.

“At the end of the day, when you see old coaches getting fired, that can be tough, and I could see that playing in Doc’s mind,” he said. “I told him, you’d better be in charge wherever you go. The worst experiences I’ve had was when there was a disconnect between the coach, general manager and owner. So it’s good to see that Doc has that kind of control now.

“But I saw Danny’s press conference, and it was good to hear when he said he was Doc’s assistant coach, and Doc was his assistant GM — I know that had to be a special situation for Doc,” Brown said.

“But I know Doc was really torn up with this thing. He was seriously talking about stepping away from coaching for a while, and I told him that when I stepped away and spent time watching other coaches coach, (it) was a real blessing for me. I learned. But watching also made me realize that I would never not coach.”

Rivers may have reached the same conclusion, without stepping away.

“Doc loved Boston, and his relationship with Danny,” Brown said. “I told him to do what was in his heart. I told him that stuff happens. You have to move ahead.”